Fantastic explanation; Thank you so much for taking the time to explain this and look into the issue. I had forgotten that, of course, strings are smart objects that check their length, and have a `setLen()` for cases like this. :facepalm:
Humorously, I wrote an entire tool predicated on my faulty knowledge, have been using it in production, and only discovered there were issues when one day I tried to compile with the arc GC, which told me I was doing something naughty with memory. :p
